I was walking by the church on Fifth Avenue, coming from one appointment and heading to another. The sign said, “12:15 worship service today.” I kept walking, in my usual hurry.
Then stopped, looked at my watch–the big hand at 16 and the little just after 12–and calculated how much time I had and how really I had a moment to dart into the church and say a prayer or two or three. In fact, maybe I needed to say a couple prayers.
I reversed my steps, dashed up the stairs and into a dimly lit chapel where two dozen people were gathered and a minister was welcoming them. He launched into the service and soon I heard myself saying along with the rest of the group the ancient words, “Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might…”
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I didn’t know a soul here. Some of them looked like they’d come from nearby office buildings in the middle of the workday like me, some seemed to be tourists and a few looked like they were homeless away from these pews.
That’s when I noticed the woman in front of me wearing a Christmas sweater. A Christmas sweater in the middle of June. Maybe it was a donation. Maybe she simply liked the colors, but I could hear half of my brain say, “That’s a ridiculous thing to wear on a day like today.”
And yet, my brain couldn’t stay there. The minister was talking about Jesus, repeating the words Jesus said at the Last Supper when he took the bread and said, “Take, eat: This is my body which is given for you…” and when he took the cup of wine and said, “Drink this, all of you…”
All of us, including the woman in the silly sweater with its reindeer, Santa, sleigh and sequins. I thought of my prayers, and then thought of the prayers that she could possibly be saying, for food, for a roof over her head, perhaps gratitude for the sweater.
All at once I was very glad to be with her and the others in this unfamiliar place, glad to remember how blessed I was and needy too, glad that we were saying our prayers together.
We launched into the Lord’s Prayer, reminding me again how Jesus put everything in the first-person plural: give us our daily bread, forgive us our sins, lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
We were all in this together, including the woman in the Christmas sweater. She was blessed. So was I. Maybe she was even more blessed. “Blessed are the poor for theirs is the kingdom of God,” Jesus said.
“Bless you,” I said to her on my way out and headed to my next appointment, at peace.
I wonder who gave her the sweater?
